Tag: John McCain

Greetings, Docudharma denizens!  This morning I got an email from an old friend, and it definitely got my juices flowing.  I’ve received so many right wing hit job emails making fun of liberals, casting dispersions on Democrats and liberals, and generally boasting about the greatness of conservatism that the wasted electrons could light Las Vegas for a month.  Today, I have received the antidote.  I included it below in all its glory.  Feel free to copy, paste, spam, and repeat (editing as you see fit)!

Update:  edger, in comment below, pointed me toward the origin of this text, John Ridley at the Huffington Post.  I include the link here.

If a black Democratic presidential candidate was an affirmative action selection (akin to the legacy selection for McCain) at the Naval Academy and graduated 894 out of 899, Fox News and the conservative right would push this story as the basis for his disqualification for the nation’s highest office.  The rest of the media would then be forced to report on it, giving the story wide exposure.

  If a white Republican presidential candidate graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, he would be celebrated as an intellectual giant ready to lead the country in bold new directions.   But since we are talking Obama here, his education fits into the  “uppity” and presumptuous narrative.

  If you’re a Harvard and Princeton-educated black woman married for years before having her first child Fox labels you a “Baby Mama”.

  If you are a white woman who eloped and had a baby eight months later you are Sarah Palin

  If you have studied international affairs for several decades, you’re “inexperienced at foreign affairs”

  If you live in a state that is geographically near a foreign country, you have “foreign policy expertise”

  If you both write and present your own words, you just “give good speeches.” If you read someone else’s words from the teleprompter-a “superstar is born.”

  If you are Obama, your greatness must be measured by what you’ve done and its NEVER enough, NOT by any of the profound speeches you wrote yourself, or the repeated grillings you’ve taken in the press.

  If you are Palin, your greatness is measured by…just one speech, written by Bush II’s speechwriter, and no you will not be taking any questions from the press.

  If you attend two of the top ivy leagues schools in the country, you are surprisingly “articulate.” If it takes you several colleges to graduate and you deliver a speech with the phonetic “new-clear” on the teleprompter, you’re a poised and eloquent speaker.

  If your staff is so dumb they mix up Walter Reed Middle School for Walter Reed Medical Center in your convention’s big night, it’s because you wanted to focus on education & it would have been political to use the soldiers in that format.

  If Obama had done that, he would be eviscerated for not knowing the difference between the two, hating the troops/America & would be dangerously unqualified to be CinC.

  If your a a liberal mayor and you ask for government financing, your a “fan of big, tax and spend, corrupt government.”

  If your a conservative mayor and wind up on John McCain’s “worst pork” list in 2001, you are “”disgusted” that small towns like yours are dependent on earmarks,” even if your town had no earmarks before you became mayor.

  A white woman talking tough is an advocate of women’s rights, a black woman is angry and bitter. A white man talking tough is a straight shooter and a conservative, a black man is a angry gangsta rapper.

  If you’re a GOP’er you naturally wouldn’t see what the problem with any of this was, even if you slept for 20 years on a dictionary opened to the word ‘hypocrisy’.

  If you’re a Republican and you talk to America’s enemies, it’s diplomacy.

  If you’re a Democrat and you talk to America’s enemies, it’s appeasement.

  If you’re a Republican, you swear Jesus is a registered member of your party.

  If you’re a Democrat, you appreciate that Jesus was a community organizer.

  If you’re a Republican and you wind up on the cover of People magazine, it’s because you’re a “regular American.”

  If you’re a Democrat and you wind up on the cover of People magazine, it’s because you’re a “celebrity.”

  If you’re a black Democratic man who can fill a stadium with 80,000 people (or worse, a German atrium with 200,000), you’re a vapid celebrity. If you’re a white Republican woman who can get a room full of fire breathing evangelical right wingers to holler, you’re a star

  If you are a Democrat, the days are counted down since the last time you have been to Iraq.

  If you are a Republican, you have all the foreign policy experience you need because your state is close to Russia.

  If you’re a black woman, with advanced academic degrees, and you have children while married, you’re a “baby mama”

  If you’re a white woman who barely graduated from college, and you get knocked up and then get married after you’re pregnant, you’re a “SuperMom”

  If you are black and your daughter is pregnant, unmarried and has an uninvolved baby daddy, you are a statistic…but if you’re a white and your daughter’s baby’s daddy has an explicit MY Space page where in between 4 letter words, he exclaims he “don’t want no kids,” you get to run for Veep.

  If you’re a Black presidential candidate that has wide appeal and the ability to motivate over two million Americans to re-engage in the political process you’re an egomaniac with a messiah complex seeking the spotlight.

  However, if you’re a right wing conservative – you’re applauded for your “likeability” and called a “unifier for the Republican base”

  If you’re white, win a beauty contest, attended 5-6 colleges before finally graduating, join the PTA, are voted to be mayor by 1000 people, govern a sparsely populated state for a almost two years now, and randomly get chosen at the last minute to be VP…you’ve lived the American dream, “she’s every American”.

  But if you’re black, raised by a single mother, lived on food stamps, help the community, get into Harvard, become the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review, build a great campaign organization from scratch, and are voted to be the presidential nominee by millions of people, you are just “uppity”.

  If you are a democratic candidate and people around you complain about the MSM vitriole toward you, you’re a whiner.

  If you are a republican candidate and you won’t answer the questions the MSM attempts to ask about your qualifications for the second highest office in the land, you’re being victimized.

  If you are a white republican mom with a special needs baby, you are suddenly the advocate of all special needs families in the US.

  If you are an Alaskan democrat mom with a special needs baby, you just saw state funding cut for programs like special-ed. You’re on your own.

  If you are a black democrat home-owner that was preyed upon by mortgage companies and your house is in foreclosure, you made bad choices and don’t deserve a house.

  If you an older white republican who can’t keep track of how many houses he has, then he deserves another one.

Connect the dots.

I won’t even use the term ‘man’ to describe this trash-talk. This is someone who describes his female opponent as a ‘piece of paper called change’…’wrapped around a piece of old fish’…that ‘stinks’. At this point, calling Palin ‘garbage’ would be a step up.

It’s that bad. And the worst of it is that so many in the media know exactly what’s happening and are scared to death of being branded as ‘racists’ for questioning the honesty and the integrity of this loathsome individual.

‘Stinks like a piece of old fish’. I was brought up to never make comments about fish and odor when women are being discussed, under any circumstances no matter what, for reasons that are so frigging obvious they don’t bear elaboration.

Many of the folks in the Obama camp, however, do not blink when the terms ‘b*tch’ and ‘wh*re’ are used in daily discourse, or in music, or in films.

Misogyny? What’s that? Throughout the long, bitter primary battles the Obama camp denied that their candidate ever attacked his primary opponent using gender. And now that a mother of five is kicking butt up and down the block out come the sexist slurs once again.

Times have changed. The good news is that nobody who heard Obama  follow the ‘Palin-Pig’ comparison with his “stinks like a piece of old fish” believes there is anything innocent at all about the candidate of change. It remains to be seen whether a media so inured to sexism will rise up to call the crud to account. An apology is, of course, impossible.

It won’t much matter. Few women, I suspect, find anything remotely inspiring or funny about comparing Sarah Palin to a `stinking piece of old fish wrapped in paper’

The Obama campaign will simply deny any derogatory attack ever took place and play the victim.

Female voters, I suspect, will be pitiless. Except those who don’t mind being  compared to ‘pigs’ and ‘stinking pieces of old fish’, of course.

From a stay-at-home mom.

I know, I know…my alias is “grannyhelen”, which I’ve used as a tribute to my own great-grandmother. I, myself, am a 40 year old stay-at-home mom of two in a small commuter city.

Wanna win my vote? It won’t be as easy as simply nominating a “hockey mom”, or even taking down the “maverick” image of John McCain. But women – and particularly mothers – may help decide this election, and it’s obvious that the McCain campaign picked Governor Palin to appeal to women like me. In order to put Barack Obama in the White House, Democrats must compete successfully for these votes.

Follow me over the fold for some talking point do’s and don’ts of this demographic.

Many people say that talking about Sarah Palin is a waste of time, a distraction.  I strongly deisagree.  The Republicans have used Palin, successfully I might add, to distract the public from 1) the lack of excitement of candidate McCain, 2) the paucity of any new ideas or issues from the Republicans, and 3) the wholesale boiler-plate duplication of Bush-NeoCon failed policies.  

But Palin aspires to be one heartbeat away from becoming the most powerful person on the planet.  A full examination of who she is, what she thinks, believes and does is in no way a distraction.  It is imperative to study, research, discuss and ask hard questions about her qualifications for the position.  We must not be sidetracked from fully vetting Palin in a manner the McCain camp did not.   And we must not be turned away from this pursuit by attacks that our examinations are sexist.  

You’re blowing it, you corporate-conservative jerk.  On the one hand, you’ve wised up a little in the wake of polls showing your opponents ahead; your attack on Palin’s hypocrisy and dishonesty over earmarks was good, though it could have been a little stronger — call her a liar, Barack.

“Don’t be fooled,” Obama told the crowd surrounding him in a large barn. “John McCain’s party, with the help of John McCain, has been in charge” for nearly eight years.

“I know the governor of Alaska has been saying she’s change, and that’s great,” Obama said. “She’s a skillful politician. But, you know, when you’ve been taking all these earmarks when it’s convenient, and then suddenly you’re the champion anti-earmark person, that’s not change. Come on! I mean, words mean something, you can’t just make stuff up.”

This is some of the kind of campaigning we want to see from you, and on a consistent basis (maybe you read Steve Almond’s Huffington Post piece).  Then, almost as though you suddenly remember you’re supposed to be the ringer candidate, you turn around and do something insipidly stupid — like saying you won’t push to repeal the shrub’s tax giveaways to the super-wealthy if you become president.

WASHINGTON – Democrat Barack Obama says he would delay rescinding President Bush’s tax cuts on wealthy Americans if he becomes the next president and the economy is in a recession, suggesting such an increase would further hurt the economy.

Those tax cuts for the super-wealthy are a large part of what’s caused the economic recession we’re suffering (the foreign press called it a full-blown depression this Spring) in the first place, and Americans know it.

What about increasing taxes on the wealthy?

“I think we’ve got to take a look and see where the economy is. I mean, the economy is weak right now,” Obama said on “This Week” on ABC. “The news with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, I think, along with the unemployment numbers, indicates that we’re fragile.”

Raising taxes on the wealthy won’t cause things to become worse; there isn’t much else worse that can happen, except perhaps publicly acknowledging what has been common knowledge to many people for years now, and that’s not likely to make a huge impact on the already-failed economy.  Are you so afraid of spooking your corporate masters this close to an election you’ve already decided you don’t want to win that you won’t even allow for even the possibility of making them pay taxes?

You can’t make such flip-flops.  Case in point: what you are quoted saying above, compared to this.

“John McCain likes to talk about fiscal responsibility, but there is no doubt that his proposals blow a hole through the budget,” Obama said.

This is another cause of the recession-depression: the fiscal irresponsibility of the GOP.  Lay blame where it belongs, Barack.  Don’t make taxes out to be the bogeyman; they’re not.  They’re the only way we’re going to begin salvaging this economy.

You’re running a granny campaign just like John Kerry did, and you KNOW how that turned out.  Stop doing it.  This election isn’t about you; it’s about every American whose suffering under the shrub and his gargoyle has to end, and you are not allowed to let us all down.

Are the Democrats willing to bet it all on preemptively striking McCain-Palin?

There is a major difference between the Democratic leadership and the Republican leadership. Democrats fight the political campaign as if it were an intellectual, academic exercise. The Republicans fight like it is an all out war, a brawl for control of the neighborhood. While the Republicans are willing to risk it all to save their hallowed ground, Democrats prefer to fight in a clean war mode. Republicans fight as if their futures depended on the win. Democrats fight as if they are right and, consequently, for the sake of fairness, deserve to win.

On any disagreement, the Republicans grab their guns and start shooting …it’s war. The Democrats pause to think. What is the problem? What are the facts? Can we negotiate with the potential aggressor? How can we avoid conflict? Should we wait until we are sure that the other party means us harm …wait until the other party throws the punch?

Greetings everyone, I hope your weekend was fantastic.  Welcome to another edition of Manufacturing Monday!  Some exciting and interesting stuff to cover this week.  First the big time strike happening at Boeing. Then theres computer maker Dell looking to sell of ALL of it’s factories, and finally could Saudi Arabia claim to be Mecca of solar energy beside crude oil??  

Folks, it seems as if everyone’s favorite Georgian President is spoiling for a Round 2 with Moscow.

Despite the presence of Russian troops on Georgian soil, President Mikhail Saakashvili said the West would help his country regain control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the separatist regions of Georgia recognized as independent nations by Moscow last month.

“Our territorial integrity will be restored, I am more convinced of this than ever,” Saakashvili said in a televised appearance. “This will not be an easy process, but now this is a process between an irate Russia and the rest of the world.”

“Our goal is the return of our territory and the peaceful unification of Georgia,” he said.

– excerpt from “Georgian president vows to reclaim 2 provinces “, AP, 2008

You know, I felt bad about what happened in Georgia.  Tbilisi’s top man should have known better than to try and call Moscow’s bluff.  Washington should have also known better than to egg on Saakashvilli.  Nobody ended up a winner in this, well maybe Gazprom, but who knows I’ll defer to Jerome a Paris on that.  

With both thanks and apologies to Glen Greenwald and Brave New Films, a video mashup I hope you will enjoy.

And remember boys and girls, it’s not about Palin…